Snap.com CEO Tom McGovern
Snap.com, the handy website preview service formally known as a search engine, just announced that they will take a more active stand against people critical of their service. It is only common sense for todays internet companies to interact with users on blogs, via Twitter or even Youtube. But Snap isn’t just evangelizing and talking to fans. Snap is a controversial service that has passionate users but just as many passionate enemies. People either love or hate those previews that sometimes seem to randomly pop-up when you navigate a Snap enabled site.
Other services tend to ignore the naysayers and critical bloggers and just concentrate on their fans. Their strategy for negativity is to just turn the other cheek. Not Snap. They started a blog to fight back. It isn’t hosted on the Snap domain but on a new and provocative domain: SnapShotsSuck.org
On their blog they write “The purpose of this blog is to acknowledge and respond to criticism of Snap Shots, whether the criticism is called for or not” and “When someone critique Snap Shots in a constructive manner, based on a sober analysis or well founded observations, we will praise the author and encourage further dialog. When someone criticize Snap Shots based on a blatant misunderstanding, with an intent to spread misinformation or simply to offend, we will respond with the facts”.
A few examples of how they respond: “Peter Van Dijck won’t give it a rest: Snap preview still really really sucks” and “Lorelle VanFossen once again grossly overreaches in her misinformed and sweeping generalizations re: Snap Shots in her year-roundup on the Blog Herald” their reaction “Lorelle, it is time that you start speaking for yourself or back up your statements with facts”.
Every PR manager will tell you it isn’t a smart thing to attack your users. But Snap found a way to do just that. They sort of say ‘Do you wanna step outside’ and take the fight to a separate arena where the gloves come off. They fight back at people who write (unfounded) critical posts and passionately defend their service. The Snap.com domain stays clean, the critics get feedback and I’m sure it saves the people at Snap from a lot of frustration.
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